Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “Inner Cheerleader”

I was thinking that I should start cooking with salt. Or at least figure out how to cook with salt. Because I have been making a lot of recipes lately, and I have noticed that putting the salt in the dry rub or marinade makes a difference. Salt cooked into food is tasty. But that is not how I generally cook, because I don’t taste while I cook. That’s a rule. I only put portion and ingredient controlled food in my mouth three times a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Any time that is not those times, nothing goes in my mouth but zero calorie drinks. Any food that is outside of my 3 portion controlled meals does not go in my mouth ever. That includes food that will eventually be part of my 3 meals. So even if it’s just a bite, a lick, a drop, I cannot have it. Even just a speck is too much. And I thought with some embarrassment what some particular foodie friends would think of that.

Because I want to be cool. I have always wanted to be cool. In all areas of whatever. Let me put it to you this way. There are a lot of different things to be, and we can be many things simultaneously, and we all have our priorities. Some people have propriety as a priority. (This is not really one of my personal priorities…) Some people have being knowledgeable as a priority. Some people have loyalty as a priority. And some of us have being cool as a priority. I am vain. Very very vain. (I am, of course, also a non-conformist, so there is a limit to how much I care about what other people think, but if you think about who has always been considered “cool,” they are generally not a bunch of followers, so…)

So I want to be cool and I am afraid that the kind of strict regulation I follow might negate my hep, devil-may-care attitude. Because I don’t actually have a devil-may-care attitude. Not when it comes to food, my body, or my sugar addiction.

But also, it is a little ridiculous that I am worried about my cooking “chops,” so to speak. I am an amazing cook. I make delicious, interesting things all the time. I am creative AF, okay? I have always made satisfying, and often ingenious, alternatives to foods I had to stop eating for my vanity, sanity, and health. But there is a limit to how “fancy” I can get. Because I have these rules. And I need these rules. These rules ultimately make me happy. Getting my eating under control really is the greatest thing to ever happen to me. And these rules are that control. Anything less than this kind of extreme limitation has never been enough to keep me sane around food. No looser set of boundaries have ever made me happy.

I am bringing this up because I heard the other day that being authentic is about being able to hear that voice in your head that talks so much shit, and shine a light on it; it’s being able to make friends with your more unsavory aspects. It’s to say out loud the things you most don’t want people to know.

My personal experience is that nothing slays the dragon like pointing out that there is a dragon, that it’s scary, and that you are afraid of being cooked like a sausage and eaten.

My other personal experience is that whatever it is that I am terrified to tell the world, seems pretty tame, even lame, once I do manage to say it out loud.

So I have these restrictive rules about food and there is not really anything to do about it. Those rules are not a problem. They are the solution to my problem, food. Food has always been my problem for as long as I can remember. So the truth is, if it’s not cool to be so restrictive, then I am not cool.

Then I have a few options: 1) Be not cool and be a bitch about it. I don’t recommend this one. It just leads to misplaced anger and resentment. 2) Be not cool and be cool about it. Or 3) Be not cool and be so freaking cool about it that it changes the perception of cool. What is not an option is to break my rules, or cross my own boundaries.

I am going to try cooking with salt, but I am still not going to taste while I am cooking. Will I screw it up? Possibly. Will I end up figuring it out in the end? I have no doubt. The deal is that cooking with salt is ultimately not a big deal, but I still had shameful, humiliating, unsavory thoughts because of it. And I do myself, and everyone who likes the authentic Kate, a disservice when I pretend that I don’t have a shady inner life.

I want to let everybody know that for all of my positive attitude, and fearless championing of the sugar-free life, even after over 11 years, I still have my embarrassments and my doubts. I want you to know because you may be having doubts too. Maybe about food, but maybe about something else, starting your own business, training for a marathon, changing careers. I don’t want you to look at me, or read my blog, and think that I am so bleeping cheerful because the only voice in my head is a cheerleader named Bambi who has the spirit and wants you to have it too! There’s also a gloomy Goth girl named Velvet who would like me, all of us really, to remember that life is pain, humiliation is hiding around every corner, resistance is futile, and in the end we’re all going to die. And she’s way sneakier than Bambi. Bambi shouts into her megaphone at high noon in a neon yellow bikini. Velvet whispers subliminal messages of impending doom in my ear while my attention is diverted.

I’m saying that I have the same dark side you do. I just make a point to keep an eye on my little Goth, and make sure she doesn’t get to make the decisions.